


one of those things about being a hero

by all_these_ghosts



Category: The Expanse (TV), The Expanse Series - James S. A. Corey
Genre: Book 4: Cibola Burn, Gen, Yuletide 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-17 21:50:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21950248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/all_these_ghosts/pseuds/all_these_ghosts
Summary: It’s one of those things about being a hero: you spend a lot of time thinking about all the people you couldn’t save.
Relationships: Jim Holden/Naomi Nagata
Comments: 7
Kudos: 30
Collections: Yuletide Madness 2019





	one of those things about being a hero

**Author's Note:**

  * For [smallearthcat (vamplover82)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vamplover82/gifts), [wanderlustlover](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderlustlover/gifts).



> this is set at the end of book 4, Cibola Burn, so: spoilers!  
> (one could read this as an exclusive show-watcher, but some of the references will be wrong)
> 
> I hope you enjoy the treat :) Miller is my favorite so I look for reasons to think about/mourn him haha

Miller — or the ghost of the ghost of Miller, whatever iteration they’re at now — is leaning against the counter, right in front of the coffeemaker, and no matter how many times Holden blinks he just won’t disappear.

It’s one of those things about being a hero: you spend a lot of time thinking about all the people you couldn’t save.

He’s been thinking about it again lately. _Brooding_ , Naomi would correct him, if she were here and feeling particularly ungenerous. He’ll never tell her, but her name is on that list. She wears her past lightly, but it doesn’t fool him for a second. One day there’ll be a reckoning.

Not today. Today he has no need to borrow trouble.

On the other side of the galley, Miller lifts his hands. Those gestures — Holden’s brain doesn’t need to translate them anymore; it’s as automatic as if he were Belt-born. Years in close quarters with Naomi, probably. But he still shrugs the Earther way, all shoulders and half-smiles. No matter how much he’s internalized them, using Belter hand signals outside a suit still feels as unnatural as putting on a Mariner Valley drawl.

“So you couldn’t save me,” the old detective says. “Don’t beat yourself up over it. I was long past saving.”

Holden tilts his head. “You thought that she could. Julie,” he adds, as though there’s any need to clarify. There is no other _she_ between them.

The corner of his mouth twists up. “I guess she did. Here I am. Saved.”

“You’re dead.”

Now it’s just a smirk. “What other kind of ‘saved’ would have me?”

Holden pulls himself up onto the counter, pressing his heels against the lower cabinets. It took years for him to be able to do things like this, for his body to accept thrust gravity enough to let him pick his feet up off the ground. For him not to feel like he’s falling, every minute of every hour.

“I still don’t get it,” he says, running a hand through his hair.

Miller raises an eyebrow. “You’re gonna have to be more specific.”

“That guy. Havelock.”

Miller’s eyes flash blue. He takes off his hat, holds it in his hands and stares down at it. “What about him?”

“Why not him? He was all right—”

“—in the end,” Miller finishes. “Instead of you?”

There’s something caught in his throat. “Yeah. Instead of me.”

“Doesn’t work that way, kid. You know that.”

“The protomolecule in my cargo bay,” he says, accusing.

“Nah.” The detective waves his arms expansively. “Well, yes. But c’mon, don’t you think we had a connection?” The smirk is back, and Holden hates it. This Miller — not the real thing, not the Investigator, finally truly just a figment of Holden’s imagination, neurons firing in the unknowable depths of his own brain — is still such a pain in the ass. It’s not fair.

“You used me.”

Miller shakes his head. “I _needed_ you. There’s a difference.”

“I don’t think—”

Naomi’s voice from the corridor, whisper-soft: “Holden?”

He presses his eyelids shut, so tight he sees stars. They web blue and bright over the blackness. When he opens his eyes again Miller is gone. “Yeah?” he says.

She slides through the open doorway, brow furrowed. Her voice isn’t quite accusing. “You said it was over.”

The empty space where Miller stood, just a second ago. Didn’t he? “I don’t think this is the same thing,” he says, but doesn’t venture to guess what it is this time. A dream, a hallucination. Nothing he’s prepared to stake a claim on.

Naomi is real and solid, present in a way that Miller never was, even when he was alive. “You don’t have to save the whole universe, you know,” she says, softly.

“That’s good. I’m pretty bad at it.”

“You do what you can,” she says. “We all do.” Her hand rests on his arm, just above the elbow. They are very nearly the same height, and her eyes are close enough to his to make him uncomfortable. They all think he’s an open book, they joke about it all the time, but he is still a man. He has secrets too.

After a moment he admits one of them. “I didn’t understand it.”

She just looks at him, waiting.

“Miller…he was always just waiting to die. And he kept taking those chances and then finally…finally he got what he wanted. And then even his _ghost_ managed it.” He squints at the empty space where Miller had stood, just seconds ago. It’s like the man lives behind his eyes now. “And I didn’t see it coming. I’ve never…I’ve never felt that. No matter how bad things got, I never…”

He can’t quite bring himself to finish the sentence, but it doesn’t matter. Naomi pulls herself the rest of the way against him, resting her cheek against his. “I know you don’t,” she says, in a way that says _but I do_ , and it makes his heart ache. “It’s part of why you’re so easy to love.”

“That’s not—”

“You don’t have to save the whole universe,” she repeats. “I don’t understand it, but I know he meant something to you. And I’m sorry he’s gone.”

“He’s been dead for years.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I don’t like thinking that I’m emotionally attached to the protomolecule,” Holden says, just a little bit bitter.

“Well, whether you like it or not.” Naomi glances away. “We don’t get to choose what we’re attached to. Who we’re attached to.” It’s a long time before she looks up at him again: Naomi has secrets too. Sometimes it feels like they’re what she’s made from, even after all these years. He’s still coming to terms with the impossibility of ever knowing her completely. Of ever knowing _anyone_ completely, even himself.

Holden closes his eyes. In the walls of the Roci something hisses and hums, and he registers it as _normal, not a threat_. Fuck gravity: he is so very glad to be back on board this ship, with people he trusts and sounds familiar enough he can sleep through them. No more waking in the dark to the sound of distant gunshots.

He and Naomi are toe to toe, ear to ear. She whispers in his, “He’s at peace now.” She’s soothing him the way she would a child, but Holden can’t bring himself to get mad about it.

“Do you believe that?” he asks, his eyes still shut tight.

He feels her nod against the side of his head. She pulls away from him, far enough to rest her fingertips on the side of his face. Her hands are always warm. “Of course I do,” she says, and he opens his eyes. Hers are dark, and more familiar than the ones he sees in the mirror every day.

Yes, he knows her.

“I’ll be fine,” he says, squeezing her hands. He wants to say _thank you_ , but even now it’s hard to admit how much he needs her.

She gives him a smile, a small one. “I wasn’t worried.”

After she leaves, Holden stays, closing and opening his eyes. This time Miller doesn’t come back.

Miller who tricked him, Miller who used him. Miller who kept on saving his life, over and over. Without him Holden feels weirdly unmoored, adrift without a compass. One way or another, in whatever new and horrifying form, Miller’s been guiding him for years now.

Into the darkness Holden says, “What if I needed you, too?”

The darkness doesn’t answer, but it’s six long weeks back to the ring. He can wait.


End file.
